Love's Labour's Lost

[Enter the PRINCESS of France, ROSALINE, MARIA,]
[p]KATHARINE, BOYET, Lords, and other Attendants]

Boyet. Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits:
485Consider who the king your father sends,
To whom he sends, and what's his embassy:
Yourself, held precious in the world's esteem,
To parley with the sole inheritor
Of all perfections that a man may owe,
490Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight
Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen.
Be now as prodigal of all dear grace
As Nature was in making graces dear
When she did starve the general world beside
495And prodigally gave them all to you.

Princess of France. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues:
500I am less proud to hear you tell my worth
Than you much willing to be counted wise
In spending your wit in the praise of mine.
But now to task the tasker: good Boyet,
You are not ignorant, all-telling fame
505Doth noise abroad, Navarre hath made a vow,
Till painful study shall outwear three years,
No woman may approach his silent court:
Therefore to's seemeth it a needful course,
Before we enter his forbidden gates,
510To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,
Bold of your worthiness, we single you
As our best-moving fair solicitor.
Tell him, the daughter of the King of France,
On serious business, craving quick dispatch,
515Importunes personal conference with his grace:
Haste, signify so much; while we attend,
Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.

Maria. I know him, madam: at a marriage-feast,
Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir
Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized
In Normandy, saw I this Longaville:
A man of sovereign parts he is esteem'd;
530Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms:
Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.
The only soil of his fair virtue's gloss,
If virtue's gloss will stain with any soil,
Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will;
535Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills
It should none spare that come within his power.

Katharine. The young Dumain, a well-accomplished youth,
Of all that virtue love for virtue loved:
Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill;
For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,
545And shape to win grace though he had no wit.
I saw him at the Duke Alencon's once;
And much too little of that good I saw
Is my report to his great worthiness.

Rosaline. Another of these students at that time
550Was there with him, if I have heard a truth.
Biron they call him; but a merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
555For every object that the one doth catch
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,
Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor,
Delivers in such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales
560And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

Princess of France. God bless my ladies! are they all in love,
That every one her own hath garnished
With such bedecking ornaments of praise?
565

Boyet. Navarre had notice of your fair approach;
And he and his competitors in oath
570Were all address'd to meet you, gentle lady,
Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt:
He rather means to lodge you in the field,
Like one that comes here to besiege his court,
Than seek a dispensation for his oath,
575To let you enter his unpeopled house.
Here comes Navarre.
[Enter FERDINAND, LONGAVILLE, DUMAIN, BIRON, and]Attendants]

Ferdinand. Madam, your father here doth intimate
The payment of a hundred thousand crowns;
Being but the one half of an entire sum
620Disbursed by my father in his wars.
But say that he or we, as neither have,
Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid
A hundred thousand more; in surety of the which,
One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,
625Although not valued to the money's worth.
If then the king your father will restore
But that one half which is unsatisfied,
We will give up our right in Aquitaine,
And hold fair friendship with his majesty.
630But that, it seems, he little purposeth,
For here he doth demand to have repaid
A hundred thousand crowns; and not demands,
On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,
To have his title live in Aquitaine;
635Which we much rather had depart withal
And have the money by our father lent
Than Aquitaine so gelded as it is.
Dear Princess, were not his requests so far
From reason's yielding, your fair self should make
640A yielding 'gainst some reason in my breast
And go well satisfied to France again.

Princess of France. You do the king my father too much wrong
And wrong the reputation of your name,
In so unseeming to confess receipt
645Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

Ferdinand. I do protest I never heard of it;
And if you prove it, I'll repay it back
Or yield up Aquitaine.

Princess of France. We arrest your word.
650Boyet, you can produce acquittances
For such a sum from special officers
Of Charles his father.

Boyet. So please your grace, the packet is not come
655Where that and other specialties are bound:
To-morrow you shall have a sight of them.

Ferdinand. It shall suffice me: at which interview
All liberal reason I will yield unto.
Meantime receive such welcome at my hand
660As honour without breach of honour may
Make tender of to thy true worthiness:
You may not come, fair princess, in my gates;
But here without you shall be so received
As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart,
665Though so denied fair harbour in my house.
Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell:
To-morrow shall we visit you again.

Boyet. Why, all his behaviors did make their retire
To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire:
735His heart, like an agate, with your print impress'd,
Proud with his form, in his eye pride express'd:
His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,
Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be;
All senses to that sense did make their repair,
740To feel only looking on fairest of fair:
Methought all his senses were lock'd in his eye,
As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;
Who, tendering their own worth from where they were glass'd,
Did point you to buy them, along as you pass'd:
745His face's own margent did quote such amazes
That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.
I'll give you Aquitaine and all that is his,
An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.